As Things Should Be

-6- Love

He didn't. He was a sick fuck who would be dead if Akaza ever got the opportunity. Doma didn't feel anything.

But then what was that!?

•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

Doma returned to the temple where he found his followers waiting for him. He greeted them all warmly but his heart soared when a familiar laugh reached his ears. He turned as he smelled her scent and found her standing, holding Inosuke in her arms. Kotoha was smiling, still wearing a simple kimono but still somehow appearing so inexplicably divine.

Doma wrapped his arms around her causing the maiden to blush. Inosuke babbled a few things and reached up for Doma's face. The toddler squished the demon's cheeks and giggled furiously making Doma feel warm inside. He could almost forget the eyes that haunted him when he felt the warmth of the two lights in his life.

"I missed you," Kotoha murmured warmly. 

"And I, you," Doma smiled once Inosuke released him. The Upper Moon then leaned down and kissed the woman earning a squeal from one of the cultists, Miki, who was, apparently, already secretly planning their wedding. Doma had learned to ignore many of his followers, but all of them seem overjoyed at the prospect of their leader finding love and were even happier seeing that it was with someone as deserving of happiness as Kotoha.

Strange, how they were so accepting of their god falling in love.

"How was the week of prayer?" Kotoha asked. The question brought the familiar pierce of guilt to Doma's heart as the lie slipped off his tongue.

"It was uneventful," he answered. And the guilt multiplied when he thought of the girls... of the girls who had just been younger, broken pieces of his beloved. And he had slaughtered them. Worse... he was lying about it and he was lying to Kotoha.

To these people, he was a connection to the heavens - that was a lie. To Kotoha, he was her love - a truth. To Kotoha, he was someone who would stay by her side and grow old with her in love - a lie. There were stacks of lies piled on small twigs of truths and the new emotion of guilt was piercing Doma with every lie, especially to Kotoha.

She was too trusting, too naive. She had full faith in Doma and so never questioned him as to where he went off or what he did. 

"Why aren't you more inquisitive?" Doma asked her one night under the pale half-moon in the temple garden.

"What?" Kotoha asked.

"You never press for answers," Doma recognized, pondering the fact. "My habits aren't exactly typical and yet you never demand an explanation for them."

"Do you ever 'demand an explanation' for my nightmares?" Kotoha asked, smiling up at the demon as she threw his words right back at him.

Doma was about to point out the difference but Kotoha continued.

"Or how about why I prefer sleeping closest to the door. Or why I sometimes frantically try and shush Inosuke for no reason. Why don't you demand an explanation for why I hate the sound of thunder or the smell of alcohol?"

Doma looked at her, puzzled. He didn't ask because he knew and if he had his way he would kill the bastard responsible for it a thousand times more.

"You understand that those things are just part of who I am," Kotoha murmured putting a hand on Doma. "You wouldn't be Doma without your mysteries. Your nocturnal habits, your quirky actions."

There was something true in that but Doma still half-wanted her to demand the truth from him. Hiding the truth felt like swallowing a monster that tore away at his organs and ripped at his chest.